Nfl Seeks To Level The Playing Field With Team Salary Caps

Sunday Special - The Great Equalizer - If it's parity the NFL wants, the proposed salary cap beginning next season could pay off - but for whom? It appears the league's marquee players stand to benefit at the expense of role players.

November 21, 1993|By Jeff Babineau of The Sentinel Staff

The months leading into the 1993 NFL season produced a dizzying bonanza of free agency, a period in which players fortunate enough to be eligible for new contracts might well have been handed winning Lotto tickets.

For players, it was a one-time invitation to grab a wheelbarrow and walk freely into an open bank vault. More than 200 unrestricted free agents either stayed with their old clubs or joined new ones, and did so at a handsome price - collecting an average raise of 101 percent. Restricted free agents (three years or less in the league) received pay hikes of 160 percent. Backup players became millionaires. Millionaires became multimillionaires.

In 1994, the game within the game will continue, but it will feature a new twist that could dramatically change the face of professional football. Once again, free agency exists, only this time,blank checks won't be so easy to come by.

In a league in which X's and O's are continually giving way to dollar signs and decimal points, a new, hard-hitting impact player is about to be introduced: A league-wide salary cap.

No longer will the NFL's 28 teams operate with different sets of rules. Regardless of whether a team is from a big market or small market, plays in front of 75,000 fans or 45,000 fans, or carries a reputation for having deep or shallow pockets, the salary cap is expected to become the NFL's great equalizer.

''We think it's going to be a healthy system for the players,'' said Doug Allen, assistant executive director of the NFL Players Association.

Adds Sam Wyche, Tampa Bay coach and director of football operations, ''It's a new game, and hopefully everybody is going to have to play by more similar rules.''

DEFINING THE CAP

The salary cap will be triggered for 1994 when player costs equal or exceed 67 percent of defined gross revenues this year, as they are expected to do. Still, there remains much mystery about the subject.

For one, nobody knows the exact dollar figure that will be attached to the cap. That figure will not be determined until the league irons out a new television contract for next season. (The league hopes to do so by late December or early January; the current television contract, which averaged $32 million, will pay teams about $40 million apiece in 1993.)

In fact, there are so many factors in implementing a salary cap that even the NFL seems wary of it. League officials have been piecing together a computer program that each team eventually will use to input its numbers in working toward a cap figure. The program was to be delivered to all 28 teams by Sept. 1.

''I just looked at my calendar, it's November, and I still haven't seen the program,'' Tampa Bay Vice President Rich McKay said. ''The reasons are simple: There are 28 teams with 28 approaches to contracts and incentives. You have to try to figure a way to bring all of that under one roof. Good luck.''

The NFL's cap is expected to be set anywhere from $32 million to $40 million, with the players association estimating it to be $36 million to $39 million. If the cap actually were set at $36 million, not all of that money would be allocated for player salaries.

To start, a team must set aside about $4 million for player benefits. Money then must be budgeted for players on injured reserve and for player incentives. Players' past signing bonuses are prorated and applied to the cap. For example, Tampa Bay rookie Eric Curry signed a 5-year deal with a signing bonus of about $3 million, so a prorated share (approximately $600,000) would be applied to the Bucs' 1994 cap, along with his base salary.

Using $32 million as the low end and $36 million as high, McKay said Tampa Bay could have from $28 million to $32 million to spend on players next season. Tampa Bay's payroll this year is $31.6 million. By contrast, the New Orleans Saints and New York Giants each will spend more than $45 million on players this season.

Although many sports fans have become acquainted with salary caps through the one employed by the National Basketball Association, that knowledge will not help them figure out the one the NFL will use.

For one, the NFL must fit the cap with 53 players, not 12. And whereas the NBA uses a soft cap (a team may exceed the cap to re-sign its own players), the NFL has a hard cap that does not budge.

The NFL and its players hope to establish a system in which teams are placed on more equal footing. This season, for instance, the Saints have a payroll of approximately $46 million, roughly double that of the Cincinnati Bengals ($24.7 million). Decide for yourself whether that has anything to do with the fact the Bengals enter the 12th week of the NFL season at 0-9 while the Saints (6-3) sit atop the NFC West.